Thousand Words: Kikuchiyo, The Seventh Samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954)
A man scowling while other onlookers appear behind him then pushing his way through the crowd in order to have…
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Thousand Words: Evil Behind the Mask of Respectability (The Bad Sleep Well, 1960)
The Bad Sleep Well (Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru), a critical portrayal of postwar corporate Japan as a breeding ground…
Four Frames: Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa, 1948)
Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi, 1948) paints a gloomy portrait of post-war Tokyo, a city in ruins where crime, corruption and…
Thousand Words: Affirming Human Dignity (Samurai Rebellion, 1967)
Masaki Kobayashi’s whole oeuvre is marked by his lifelong preoccupation with the complex relationship between the individual and society, the…
Thousand Words: An Inner Journey in a Wintry Landscape (Snow Trail, 1947)
In terms of film history, Snow Trail (Ginrei no hate) is worth looking at simply because it marks the screen…
Thousand Words: Inner Torments and Social Disease (The Quiet Duel, 1949)
In the long opening sequence of Akira Kurosawa’s The Quiet Duel (Shizukanaru kettō), which takes place in 1944 in one…
Thousand Words: “No man is an island” (Hell in the Pacific, 1968)
The great outdoors – here a maritime space – is a protagonist in its own right in John Boorman’s two-character…
Four Frames: Red Lion (Kihashi Okamoto, 1969)
Red Lion (Akage), co-produced by Toho and Mifune Productions, is one of eight films Kihashi Okamoto made with Toshirō Mifune….
